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Sunday, 14 February 2016

In an article for the Daily Mail dated 27 November 2006, ‘Call a spin doctor for Mr
Putin’, Ephraim Hardcastle asked:

“Have we been manipulated over
the gruesome death of Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko?”

Does
the Pope have a balcony? He goes on…

“The message is: Litvinenko was
murdered by agents acting on behalf of Russia's President Vladimir Putin. Do
not trust Putin. He is a very bad man.

From the moment he was admitted
to hospital in London, Litvinenko was described as the victim of a poisoning
plot by the Russian state.

We were fed copious details of
how he had rebelled against the Putin machine - refusing to carry out violence
on its behalf - and how he feared for his life 24 hours a day.

A pin-sharp picture of the
dying Litvinenko on his hospital bed was made available to newspapers.

So were his last words,
including: "I can hear the beating wings of the angel of death... you may
succeed in silencing one man, but the howl of protest around the world will
reverberate, Mr Putin, for the rest of your life. May God forgive you for what
you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people."

Litvinenko's associate in
London is Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, an arch enemy of Putin who seeks
"regime change" in Russia. He is behind the claims that Litvinenko
was murdered by Putin. He says Putin wants him dead, too.

Putin loyalists have another
theory: "British PR men ordered the sacrifice of Litvinenko to make a
noise," says the daily newspaper Izvestia.

"This death is in the
interest of those who want to spoil relations between Russia and the
West."

So who are the "British PR
men"? Step forward Lord Bell, the distinguished former adviser to
Margaret Thatcher.”

Lord
Bell’s contacts were so influential and powerful, he was even able to secure
for his oligarch client a place on BBC1’s Question Time, the first Russian so
to appear, on 7th June 2007. At this and every other opportunity, whether in
the company of royalty, media and business tycoons, journalists, policy-makers,
sports stars, celebrities or politicians, Berezovsky never deviated from his
anti-Putin script. Simultaneously, he was pouring millions of pounds, dollars,
euros etc into every conceivable form of propaganda to discredit Putin and his
government.

Marina L: “After that he never came
out from this bed.”

Watson: “Specialist consultants
were baffled, but his life was ebbing away.”

Prof Amit Nathwani: “His vital organs were
being destroyed in a sequential pattern. It started with his liver, and then
was followed very rapidly by his kidneys and then his heart. We could see that
we were losing the battle, right in front of our eyes.”

Peter Clark (counter-terror
chief): “We were in the unusual position of having what you could describe as a
living murder victim, telling us about how he came to believe that he was
meeting his death.”

Watson: “So there were police
at his bedside, but also government scientists from the Ministry of Defence,
and others in plain clothes.”

Dr John Goldstone, Director
Critical Care Unit, UCL: “The police officers were there, but there were some
people who probably weren’t police officers but were possibly members of the security
services and we don’t know…”

Watson interjects: “Spooks?”

Dr Goldstone: “Well, um, yes,
possibly.”

Gosh.
What with dodgy dossiers and other pitiful failures, one might expect Britons to
have lost a little of their tendency, implicit in this exchange, to giggle
nervously at the thought of the trench-coat and dark glasses-wearing brigade. Furthermore,
given the extent to which he was implicated in the furtive manipulation of
evidence leading up to the Iraq War, Sir John Scarlett's appointment as head of MI6 (the
post he held when these events took place) was perhaps something like giving Rolf Harris the Director-Generalship of the BBC.

Prof Nathwani: “A couple of days
after he was admitted, we had a brainstorming session with various medical
colleagues; pharmacists, toxicologists, and colleagues from Public Health
England, and we considered all possibilities.”

Watson: “As a last resort the
highly unusual decision was made to send blood and urine samples here, to the
government's top-secret nuclear research centre at Aldermaston. This is the
research site responsible for developing Britain’s nuclear bomb.

The
idea Watson is trying to market here, that the discovery of Polonium-210 as the
cause of Litvinenko’s death was somehow on a par with cracking the Enigma code,
is out-and-out claptrap. As can be seen from Owen’s report, the possibility of
poisoning had already been raised on 9th November:

3.120c “On or around 9
November, Marina Litvinenko asked Mr Litvinenko’s consultant, Dr Dean Creer
whether Mr Litvinenko’s infection could have been the result of poisoning. She
explained that her husband was usually extremely fit and healthy, but, “he knew
of dangerous people and a friend of theirs had been poisoned and killed by
these people”, hence her anxiety.”

Soon
afterwards, it is clear that some form of poisoning had become the default
assumption, and from 14 November onwards, radioactive poisoning was strongly
suspected. At 3.120e of Owen’s report, on seeing Litvinenko for the first time,cancer specialist Dr
Virchis testifies,

“…his presentation was similar
to that of a patient suffering from acute leukaemia who had been treated with
intensive chemotherapy and total body irradiation prior to a bone marrow
transplant. The clinical notes reveal that radiology was to be asked to ‘check
radioactive sources of poisoning.’”

It
happens that work on establishing a link with Polonium-210 began on the day
before Litvinenko died, but by that time, the radiological line of enquiry was firmly
established as the front-runner - it featured as such in police communiques and
newspaper articles. Henceit
is either disingenuous or a bit dim or both for Watson to make out as if somehow
there was only a slim chance of investigators identifying Polonium-210 – they
would have got to it by a process of elimination, sooner or later.

About Me

Hi, I'm James Bruce, a 41 year old chap from Bristol in England. I set off on 22 March 2013 from Blantyre, Scotland, with the aim of reaching Blantyre, Malawi, with God's help. I am raising money for Mary's Meals, the non-denominational charity that feeds children worldwide and helps them gain an education. I paid for all my expenses myself, thanks to a legacy from my late grandfather. If you would like to donate please call call 0800 698 1212 or visit www.marysmeals.org.uk.
I hope you will accompany me on this journey from wherever you are! God bless, James